Runemarks

by Joanne Harris

  Now, Odin was nothing if not resourceful. He was blind but not helpless, and as he fled toward the Strond, he began to rediscover skills he had not used for centuries. The passageway was obstacle-free, the few loose rocks that littered the ground easy to kick aside, and he had his staff to help him along, tapping first one side of the wall and then the other, probing ahead to warn him of anything on the ground that might trip him or stand in his way.

  He found that he could tell when the passage forked, could tell from the movement of the air—its temperature, its dampness or otherwise, its sweetness or foulness—which direction he ought to take, which passage led up, which led down, which passed over water, and which was a dead end.

  Exploration of the rock at his fingertips proved equally fruitful. Damp, porous rock indicated a good air supply; smooth, well-polished rock suggested a well-traveled route; the patterns of dust on the ground, the distribution of rock litter, the sound made by his staff as he rapped it against a hollow wall—all these showed him things that might not have been apparent to a man accustomed to relying upon the evidence of his eyes. In these passages, at least, he was not so much at a disadvantage.

  Then there was the truesight. The injury to his good eye had not affected his inner vision; with Bjarkán he could still see the colors, the footprints of magic, and the muted glow that indicated the presence of life.

  In this way, and quite by accident, Odin discovered the Whisperer’s trail. He had reached the heart of Red Horse Hill at about the same time as Loki and Maddy crossed the Strond and found no recent sign of them there. But as he approached the central chasm from one of the tunnels leading down, his truesight showed him a fugitive gleam and he caught his first scent of the Whisperer.

  Someone had tried to erase it, he saw, but its signature was very strong, and in places it overwhelmed the workings, spilling out at intervals along the passage. Once it was joined by a faint signature of a familiar violet, another time by a bright fragment that was unmistakably Maddy’s. They were moving fast, Odin could tell. And they were heading straight for the Underworld.

  But why would they risk the Underworld? Hel had no reason to welcome Loki—in fact, she was more likely to kill him on sight or, better yet, hand him over to Netherworld, where Surt the Destroyer still kept the Æsir captive and would be more than interested to learn how one of his prisoners had managed to escape.

  Unless he had something to bargain with, thought Odin. A weapon, perhaps? A glam?

  In the darkness he smiled grimly. Of course. He was not the only one to covet the Whisperer. Surely Hel could have little use for such a glam, but beyond Hel’s world, where the balance was set, in Netherworld, or even beyond—

  For a moment he stopped. Could that be Loki’s aim? he thought. To use the Whisperer as a bargaining tool—not with the Æsir, or the Vanir, or even with the Order, but with the very Lords of Chaos?

  Odin’s mind reeled at the thought.

  That power combined with the power of Chaos, destabilizing the Worlds, rewriting reality…

  It could mean, quite simply, the Worlds’ unmaking. Not another Ragnarók, but a final dissolution of all things, a breakdown in the laws of Order and Chaos, a terminal upsetting of the balance.

  Surely even Loki would not dare to set in motion such a chain of events. But if not, then what exactly did he expect to gain? And even if he was innocent of malice, then did he really understand the risk he was taking—not only with his own life, but with the whole of existence?

  4

  Above One-Eye, at last, the hunt was on. Three hunters, to be exact: a woman who was a Fury, a goddess, and also a wolf; a man who was two men in a single body; and Adam Scattergood, who was beginning to think that even death at the wolf woman’s hands might be more merciful than the terror of these endless passages with their sounds and their smells.

  Skadi had wanted to kill him at once. Reverting to her natural form, she had leveled her ice blue gaze at Adam and given a wolfish—and still bloodstained—smile.

  But Nat had other plans for Adam. And here he was now, miles below the demon mound, carrying the parson’s Book and pack. Fear had made him surprisingly docile, and although the pack was heavy, he made no complaint. In fact, thought Nat, it was easy to forget him altogether, and he did, for long periods, as they followed the white she-wolf deeper into World Below.

  They stopped for supplies some way down, and while Nat rested, Adam packed as much food and drink as he could carry. Bread, cheese, dried meat—lots of this, in the silent hope that the wolf woman might prefer it to fresh boy. Adam himself was not at all hungry. Nat ate sparingly, and studied the Good Book, and seemed to argue with himself in a way that Adam found very disturbing. Then they walked—Skadi in her natural shape, wearing Jed Smith’s cast-off clothes and cursing at the elusive trail—and then they slept for an hour or two, and when Adam awoke from a terrifying dream, he was not really surprised to find that his present reality was far, far worse.

  There must have been a thousand paths leading out from under the Hill. Even with Skadi’s wolf senses, finding the trail was a difficult task. She did find it, however: it ran alongside their own path, in a small lateral tunnel to which they had not, as yet, gained access. But they were close: once they had even heard their quarry tapping its way quietly along the tunnel at their side, and the white wolf had howled with frustration at finding herself so near, with only a span of rock between themselves and their prey.

  But the wolf form tired Skadi if she kept to it for too long, and often she was obliged to shift to her human Aspect, eating ravenously every time she did so. Adam found her human Aspect even more intimidating than her wolf form. At least with a wolf he knew more or less what he was dealing with. And when she was a wolf, there could be no spells or glamours, no sudden explosions, mindblasts, or conjurings. Adam had always hated magic; only now was he beginning to realize quite how much.

  Better to deny it all, he thought. Better to tell himself that it was all a dream from which he would soon awake. It made sense. Adam had never been a dreamer, and so it was natural that this—this exceptionally long and troubling dream—should have unnerved him. But a dream was all it was, he thought, and the more he told himself that it was just a dream, the less he thought of his aching back, or the wolf woman at his side, or the impossible things that came to him out of the dark.

  By the time they reached the river, Adam Scattergood had come to a decision. It didn’t seem to matter anymore that he’d seen two men die, that he was far from home in the company of wolves, that he had blisters on his feet and rock dust in his lungs, or even that the parson had gone insane.

  He was dreaming, that was all.

  All he had to do was wake up.

  Meanwhile, on the trail of the hunters, the Vanir had made less headway than they would have liked. Not that the trail was difficult to follow—Skadi was making no attempt to shield her colors—but by now the six of them were so little in sympathy with each other that they could hardly agree on anything.

  Heimdall and Frey had wanted to shapeshift at once and follow the Huntress in animal guise. But Njörd refused to be left behind, and his favorite Aspect—that of a sea eagle—was hardly practical underground. Freyja refused to shift at all, protesting that there would be no one to carry her clothes for when she returned to her true Aspect, and all of them found it impossible to make Idun understand the urgency of their pursuit, as she stopped repeatedly to marvel over pretty stones or veins of metal in the ground or the black lilies that grew wherever water seeped through the walls.

  Frey suggested shapeshifting Idun, the way Loki had once turned her into a hazelnut to flee the clutches of the Ice People. But Bragi wouldn’t hear of it, and finally they proceeded on foot, rather more slowly than they would have wished.

  All in all, it had been a long, quarrelsome descent for the six of them, Heimdall maintaining stubbornly that Odin could not have betrayed them, Freyja complaining about the dust, Bragi singing cheery songs th
at got on everyone’s nerves, Njörd impatient, Frey suspicious, and Idun so lost to any sense of peril that she had to be closely watched at all times to keep her from wandering away. Nevertheless, they crossed the Strond barely an hour after the Huntress, for Skadi had her own problems, in the shape of Nat Parson and Adam Scattergood, both of whom had slowed her down considerably.

  Meanwhile, on the far side of the Strond, someone else had been following a trail. It was an easy trail to follow, if you knew where to look; the Captain had shielded his colors, of course, but had left small cantrips at every turn he took, embedded in the tunnel walls or hidden beneath the stones of the path, to show where he was heading.

  Not that Sugar had any doubt where he was heading—and only the Captain could be mad or bad enough to believe that any such as he could ever return from such a destination.

  But he was the Captain, and Sugar had long since learned not to question his orders.

  He’d caught up with Sugar in the food stores, where the goblin was about to settle down with a suckling pig and a yard of ale. At first Sugar hadn’t recognized him, dressed as he was in Crazy Nan’s dress, looking filthy and hunted and close to exhaustion—but Loki had soon got his attention, binding him to obedience with threats and runes and giving instructions in a low, hurried tone, as if afraid of being overheard.

  “Why me?” Sugar had asked desperately.

  “Because you’re here,” Loki had said. “And because I really don’t have a choice.”

  Sugar wished he hadn’t been there. But Loki’s instructions had been quite clear, and so the goblin followed his trail, picking up the spent cantrips as he went and occasionally checking the pouch around his neck—the pouch the Captain had given him, with orders on how to use it if it became necessary.

  The Captain was in trouble—that was for sure. Sugar didn’t need any glam to tell him that. In trouble deep—and heading deeper—but still alive, though for how long, Sugar could not say.

  Every half hour he checked the pouch. What was inside looked like a common pebble, but Sugar could see the runes on it—Ós, for the Æsir, Bjarkán, and Kaen, the Captain’s own sign—all cleverly put together to make a sigil that was unmistakably Loki’s.

  This runestone will show you what to do, he had said, cramming clothes and supplies into a pack. Follow me close—and don’t be seen.

  Follow him where? Sugar hadn’t dared to ask. In fact, he hadn’t needed to—the Captain’s expression had already told him more than he wanted to know. Loki was going to Hel, of course—a place Sugar didn’t even like to hear about in stories—and he was taking Maddy with him.

  If the stone turns red, the Captain had said, then you’ll know I’m in mortal peril. If it turns black—his scarred lips tightened—then you’ll know I’m beyond reprieve.

  Sugar almost wished the stone would turn black. He’d been following the trail for what seemed like days; he was hungry, thirsty, tired, and getting more and more worried at every step. There were rats deep down in the lower tunnels, rats and roaches as big as he was. There were freezing waters and hidden pits; there were geysers and sulfur pits and limestone sinks. But Sugar continued to follow the trail, though even he wasn’t sure anymore whether it was fear, loyalty, or simply that fatal curiosity of his that kept him going, step by step.

  The stone had been red for nearly an hour. And it was getting darker.

  5

  In a silent chamber boxed within a multitude of silent chambers, Hel the Half-Born was still debating what to do. Nothing happened in the Underworld without her knowledge, and it had not taken her long to realize that a couple of intruders had penetrated her domain.

  Normally she might just have ignored the pair. Death’s territory is endless, and most trespassers either turned back or died slowly out in the wastes. Either option suited Hel; it had been centuries since she’d granted an audience to anyone living, and even then, her visitor had returned alone. Hel was not generous, nor was she given to fierce emotions, but now, as she sensed the approach of warm blood, she was aware of a sensation almost of surprise.

  Of course, she’d forced them to wait for her. Just long enough to punish them a little and to teach them some of the patience of Hel. Time has no meaning to the dead. And a day in Hel seems like weeks to the living. And so Loki and Maddy measured their time in gulps of water, slices of sleep, and bites of bread so hard that they might have been stones. And when their small supplies ran out, they measured it in the long, looping, staggering steps they took across the endless sand, and the times they fell, and stood up, and fell, and wondered if she would ever come.

  Now Hel opened one eye and closed the other. Her living eye was a bright green, not unlike her father’s in color, but with a coldness in its lack of expression that made even the living side of her face look dead. The dead eye saw further, though it was blind, and its gaze was like an empty skull’s.

  For Hel was two women merged into one: one side of her face was smooth and pale; the other side was pitted and gray. A sheaf of black hair fell over one shoulder; on the other, a twist of yellow twine. One hand was shapely; the other a claw. The rune Naudr marked her throat; the same rune was on the binding rope in her hand. One withered foot gave her a lurching gait.

  Not that Hel was in the habit of walking; she spent the centuries in a half doze, dead eye open to acknowledge the thousands that poured, day and night, second by second, into her realm.

  Among those thousands, few had ever caught her interest. The dead know everything, but they don’t give a damn, as the saying goes, and a dead prince in all his regalia is no less dead than a dead street sweeper, sewage worker, or maker of novelty spoons. There isn’t a lot of variety among the dead, and Hel had long since learned to ignore them equally.

  But this was different. Two trespassers deep in her domain, their signatures visible to her living eye like two columns of colored smoke far across the plain. That in itself was enough to arouse her curiosity—and that violet trail was strangely familiar. But there was something else with them—something that tantalized her vision like sunlight on a piece of glass…

  Sunlight? Glass? Yes, Hel remembered the light of the sun. She remembered how they had robbed her of it, how they had sent her to this place where nothing changed or lived or grew, where day and night were equally absent in the eternal corpse-light of the dead.

  But who were they? The Æsir, of course. The Æsir, the Fiery, the Gødfolk, the gods. They’d promised her a kingdom fit for a queen, and this—this—was what she’d got.

  Of course, that had been many centuries ago, and she’d thought the Æsir long gone.

  But unless her warm-blood sight deceived her, two at least remained, and it was with something close to eagerness that she stood now, the rope of glamours in her living hand, and crossed the endless desert with a word.

  It was Maddy who saw her first. Awakening from troubled dreams in her shelter among the rocks, she sensed a chilly presence and, opening her eyes, found herself looking at a woman’s profile, green-eyed, high-cheekboned, with hair that gleamed like crows’ feathers. She had only a moment to gasp at this woman’s beauty, and then she turned, and the illusion was gone.

  Hel looked at Maddy’s expression and, for the first time in five hundred years, she smiled. “That’s right, little girl,” she said softly. “Death has two faces. The one that inspires poets and lovers; the one for whom warriors lose their heads…and then there’s the other one. The grave. Worms. Rot.” She gave a mocking curtsy, lurching on her withered foot.

  “Welcome to Hel, little girl.”

  Loki was wide awake. He’d sensed Hel’s watchful presence at once and had hidden the Whisperer, wrapped up in Maddy’s jacket to make a pack, sealed with runes, under an outcrop of weathered rocks. Now he emerged from his hiding place, with a smile that was half insult, half charm, and announced, “I’d forgotten what a dump this place was.”

  Very slowly Hel turned. “Loki,” she said. “I hoped it was you.” She gave
him a look that made Maddy’s flesh crawl. “I imagine you must have some purpose here.”

  “Oh, I do,” said Loki.

  “It must be important,” she said. “To come, unprotected, into my realm is not without a certain risk, even for you. And as for her…” She squinted at Maddy. “Who is she, anyway? I can smell her Æsir blood from here.”

  “No one you’d know. A relative.”

  “Really?” said Hel. Certainly there was something about the girl that looked familiar. Something in the eyes, perhaps. Hel searched her extensive memory, but Death’s hospitality is vast, and she could not find the clue she sought.

  She smiled at Maddy. “I’m sure you must be hungry, my dear.” She gestured with her living hand, and suddenly a table appeared, broad as the Strond, bright and gleaming and mountain-ridden with silver, glassware, fine bone china, damask napkins; mead, wine; pastry pies with lids like cauldrons; tureens of soup like fairy coaches; frosted grapes piled high on platters; roasted piglets with apples in their mouths; and honeyed figs, and fresh young cheeses; slashed pomegranates, peaches, plums; olives in spiced oil; and baked salmon with their tails in their mouths, stuffed clams, rolled herring; sweet cider; plump almond rolls, cinnamon buns, muffins like clouds, and bread—oh, bread of a thousand kinds: soft, white, poppy-seeded, plaited, round loaves and square loaves and loaves dark and dense with fruit…

  Maddy stared, remembering perhaps the last time she had eaten, the last time she had felt hunger, real hunger, in this dead world. Stretching her hand toward the laden table, mouth watering, craving to taste—

  “Don’t touch it,” Loki said.

  “Why not?” said Maddy, with her hand on a plum.

  “You don’t eat the food of the Underworld. Not a bite, not a sip, not a seed. That is, if you ever want to leave.”

  Hel faced him, deadpan. “None of my guests have ever complained.”

  He laughed at that. “She gets her sense of humor from her father’s side,” he told Maddy. “Now come on, let’s go. That hall of yours has to be somewhere around here, right?”